Do Trump's Border Moves Reveal a Clever Machiavellian or a Bumbling Doofus?

The political advantages of the president's zigzagging on family separation and the "Muslim ban" are not obvious.

The president announces a strict new border policy aimed at preventing foreigners from harming Americans. Although it is completely foreseeable that the policy will hurt many innocent people and provoke a bipartisan public outcry, the president does not seem to anticipate the objections that eventually lead him to retreat from the policy at the urging of his advisers. Afterward he expresses regret that he listened to his advisers, wishing that he had stuck with the tough policy he initially favored instead of the watered-down version he felt compelled to accept.

That scenario, which played out during Donald Trump's first year in office as he tried to impose restrictions on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, was repeated last week as he suddenly modified a "zero tolerance" policy that had separated thousands of children from parents accused of illegally crossing the southern border. This pattern might reflect a sophisticated political strategy that aims to satisfy Trump's base while first antagonizing and then mollifying more moderate allies and voters. If so, Trump and his underlings have done an impressive job of simulating ineptitude.

It seems more likely that Trump is trying to do what he believes is the right thing, only to be frustrated by legal and political realities. That explanation is more consistent with the chaotic implementation of these policies and with Trump's longstanding views on immigration and border control.

The travel restrictions embodied in the executive order that Trump issued a week after his inauguration grew out of what he had originally described as "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." Presumably someone told him that an explicit religious test for granting admission to the United States was constitutionally problematic. Trump's order instead banned travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, initially including legal permanent residents of the United States as well as people legally working or attending school here. That policy caused much confusion and consternation at airports, provoked protests from Republicans as well as Democrats, and ran into immediate trouble in the courts. It was repeatedly revised, and the Supreme Court is about to rule on the latest version.

The Court probably will uphold that order. But Trump caused needless trouble for himself by recommending a comprehensive "Muslim ban" during his campaign and by rushing to issue a half-baked policy without consulting the people who would be charged with carrying it out or talking to advisers who could have suggested ways to make it more legally defensible (such as making it clear from the outset that the ban did not apply to green-card holders). The administration's lawyers initially seemed ill-prepared to defend the travel ban, and Trump undermined their efforts by complaining that the Justice Department had talked him into a "watered down, politically correct version" of his original order. On the face of it, Trump tripped over his own feet by recklessly following his instincts.

Likewise with the policy of criminally prosecuting virtually everyone who illegally enters the United States, which Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last month. Sessions knew that "zero tolerance" would break up families, since children could not legally be detained with their parents. Presumably Trump also knew that. Yet somehow he did not anticipate the uproar that would be caused by stories of crying children snatched from their parents and transported hundreds or thousands of miles away. Despite the public outcry, Trump steadfastly defended the policy before suddenly giving in last week by promising to keep families together from now on, although it remains unclear how that goal can be legally reconciled with his commitment to continue "zero tolerance."

Once again, Trump wishes he had stayed the course. "Privately," The New York Timesreports, "the president has groused that he should not have signed the order undoing separations." Yesterday Trump tried to compensate for the reversal by declaring that people caught crossing the border without permission should be summarily sent back (an approach that is actually inconsistent with "zero tolerance," which calls for criminal prosecution and punishment prior to deportation). The political advantages of such zigzagging, which does not makes the president look tough or smart, are not obvious.

Trump is not just catering to the anti-immigrant sentiment of his supporters but following through on opinions he has publicly expressed since the 1990s. While it's true that Trump criticized Mitt Romney, the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee, for advocating policies that would encourage illegal immigrants to "self-deport" (a stance that Trump described as "crazy," "maniacal," and "mean-spirited"), he has a long history of advocating not only crackdowns on illegal immigration but reductions in legal immigration. "I'm opposed to new people coming in," he said while seeking the Reform Party's presidential nomination in 1999. "We have to take care of the people who are here."

In The America We Deserve, the book Trump published the following year, his discussion of immigration sounds pretty similar to what he has been saying since he began his 2016 campaign. "America is experiencing serious social and economic difficulty with illegal immigrants who are flooding across our borders," he wrote. "We simply can't absorb them. It is a scandal when America cannot control its own borders….Our current laxness toward illegal immigration shows a recklessness and disregard for those who live here legally….It's irresponsible to give a helping hand to outsiders so long as there is one American deprived of a livelihood or basic services." He added that "legal immigrants do not and should not enter easily" and warned that the U.S. must be "extremely careful not to admit more people than we can absorb."

Trump's sense that gains for immigrants come at the expense of U.S. citizens is of a piece with his zero-sum view of international trade, a perspective that also was influencing his thinking long before he sought the GOP's 2016 nomination. Unlike, say, his current stances on abortion and gun control, Trump's views on trade and immigration seem sincere as well as politically expedient. That history reinforces the impression that he is going with his gut on these issues, heedless of the practical and political consequences. Maybe that is the impression he is deliberately creating so his opponents will underestimate him, a plan that has been in the works for decades. He sure fooled me.

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I’m making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life.

The facts are in the polls. Two weeks of this has significantly eroded the Democrats’ generic ballot advantage. The facts are what they are. This stuff works politically. Most of the country and especially the voters who are disposed to support Republicans do not support open borders.

The facts are what they are. I don’t see why Reason feels the need to lie and pretend they are otherwise.

The facts are in the polls. Two weeks of this has significantly eroded the Democrats’ generic ballot advantage.

On the contrary, the Democrats have all the momentum right now. And there’s still plenty of time before November for the Drumpf regime to engage in even more Nazi behavior that convinces normal people to get on the right side of history by joining #TheResistance. I’m as confident as I’ve ever been in the #BlueWave that will produce a Democratic House majority.

Because South Americans are fleeing a Holocaust? Just how low are you willing to go to justify open borders I wonder. Their situation is nothing like the Jews.. who had no country of their own, fleeing genocide.

You are totally right. Families being callously separated has had nothing to do with it. Government agents stealing children from their parents under false pretenses was just a leftist ruse, and never actually happened. It’s all propaganda. True Americans want families to be broken up, because that’s what it means to be Americans! Anyone who doesn’t like it is a red-diaper-doper-baby.

“Government agents stealing children from their parents under false pretenses was just a leftist ruse, and never actually happened.”

Lacking in the past news stories on family separation was the admission the government cannot house families together. Now it is finally in every article I read on the BBC and, unsurprisingly, the “zero tolerance” policy is gone for prosecuting illegal aliens with kids because it is illegal to house kids with adults together.

“The CBP chief said parents cannot be prosecuted if US officials no longer intend to separate them from their children, who are legally not allowed to be kept in adult detention facilities.

The border official’s decision paves the way for US immigration enforcement to revert largely to the approach under the Obama administration.

It means US border agents who stop undocumented adult migrants accompanied by children will hand them a court summons and allow them to go on their way, rather than hold them in a detention facility. Adults unaccompanied by children will still be detained.”BBC

“Hey, illegal aliens, we know you intended to sneak into the country illegally but please show up to this court date. Pinky promise to come?”

Now, the immigration laws may be wrong, which would mean amending them – and Congress are the ones to do that. I don’t know the current status of Trump’s negotiations with Congress, nor what his ultimate end game is.

Does *he* know what his ultimate end game is? It’s possible he’s just winging it and seeing what happens. But that’s just a guess.

Immigration laws are guidelines. Administrations have the authority and duty to put rational priorities for enforcement.

Zero tolerance means less resources available to protect and investigate those who are trying to enter to do harm. Every toddler held in a tent camp is one more MS13 member who slips away because the agents are busy chasing families.

It’s one continued point of contention here on this forum. Open-Border is not often strictly defined, and so everyone just assumes many of the stances of the opposition. This goes until it’s approximately a gloss for pro-immigration in general.

That’s probably because one sides entire shtick is make the guy in charge the one who makes all big decisions whereas the other side doesn’t really know what it wants because it doesn’t really understand the question.

There are elements in the White House who, for whatever reason, push for maximum disruption over effective policy. The first travel ban was announced with no planning laid ahead and enforced with little guidance to the people on the front lines to enforce it. If it was meant to be effective, it would not have been rolled out in a manner that guaranteed haphazard decisions on the front lines and immediate court challenges and injunctions.

There could have been a political calculation that the people would take his side on the issue. I think this greatly overestimates the backing of the public.

There could have been a calculation that the hubbub would overshadow other, less popular policies.

Certainly, it was done in some sense to own the libs.

One thing it’s obvious is that it was not done to be an effective policy or solve any actual problems.

What did Fox lose its mind over that Obama did that was really no big deal? I honestly don’t watch Fox News. Libertarians seem to be obsessed with it. So, please tell me what they did. I understand that all things must be equal between left and right. So, please enlighten me since I haven’t watched Fox news in 20 years.

I don’t think this effects thousands of children. Most of the kids we see pictures of are unaccompanied minors or used by criminals to game the system. Those kids are in the safest place they can be. Why don’t you care about the safety of children Sullum? Immigration also hurts those other countries. All the men leaving to work here contributes to the chaos there.

Idiocracy explained all this. Either Trump’s an idiot who believes his own nonsense or he’s smart enough to know his supporters believe this nonsense so he pretends to believe it too.

Go back to the campaign when he talked about his “simple plan” to defeat ISIS – bomb the shit out of them and take their oil, waterboard “and a lot worse” captured terrorists, go after the terrorists’ families. When people explained that those last two are war crimes and the military would refuse to follow such orders, Trump insisted they’d do whatever he told them to do. And as far as the first one goes, does Trump seriously believe we have the capability to carpet-bomb half the Middle East, that we have thousands of long-range bombers and millions of bombs? Does he not grasp just how big the Middle East is and how small a bomb crater is in comparison? And nobody’s going to say anything about us killing tens of millions of innocent civilians? This is the sort of shit you say when you’re a drunk redneck sitting around having a few beers with your buddies, it’s not a serious proposal.

And yet here we are, Trump talking about just catching illegals and throwing them back across the border like due process ain’t a thing. There’s a reason they refer to “alleged” criminals, you’re not actually an illegal immigrant until a court says you’re an illegal immigrant and there’s a *process* for making that determination. To the extent that some people will applaud Trump saying “fuck this shit, just throw them all out”, you’re taking it as an article of faith that your Messiah is infallible and you and your whole cult can go eat a big bag of dicks as far as I’m concerned. You’ve abandoned the idea of a republic and embraced a God-Emperor. We know where that’s gonna end.

Look, we’re talking about a guy who, on his first venture into politics, beat the experienced candidates of one party to secure their nomination, and then won the general election despite being outspent by several to one, despite having most of the media as mortal enemies, and despite having the establishment of “his own” party covertly or even openly opposing him.

And he’s a billionaire married to a supermodel, who shags porn stars. Never mind if that’s your gig, think it’s easy to accomplish?

“Bumbling doofus” isn’t a rational evaluation, it’s trash talk. A bumbling doofus would never have gotten where he is. The smart move is to assume that whatever he’s doing is well thought out, and if you don’t understand it, he didn’t mean for you to understand it.

He’s a Machavellian who finds it useful to be thought stupid by his enemies, and to have them too outraged to think straight. It’s amazing me how many people don’t pick up on that, and walk around in an outraged daze as a result.

He defeated what was then considered the strongest group of GOP candidates in a very long time to win the nomination. He then beat Hillary who was, despite the claims after the election that she was a horrible candidate, was considered at the time to be unbeatable. This when the conventional wisdom was that Trump was so bad the Republicans would not even be able to hold the House. He won and the Republicans held both houses of Congress. He has managed to get the biggest tax reform in 30 years through Congress and was a single vote in the Senate away from repealing Obamacare.

We will see what happens in the midterms. But the blue wave that everyone was so certain of as recently as a few months ago seems to have fizzled. The Democrats have at best a 50 50 chance at taking the House and very little chance at retaking the Senate.

At what point do the results cause people to conclude Trump can play this game?

Yup. I’ve read some of his books, and he is not what one would describe as an intellectual. BUT he does have really good gut instincts with a lot of things.

One of his skills is clearly being able to figure out how to throw his opponents off guard. As some have said he’s the greatest Troll of all time. He weaponizes this fact, because he knows that half +/- of the country agrees with him on most of his positions. He gets the other side to freak out and show their true hand (which they usually like to hide), which has often tilted those in the middle his direction, because most people REALLY don’t believe in the extreme leftist point of view.

So at worst I think one could describe him as an idiot savant… But that’s still not an entirely bad thing to be. It’s better than being a plain old idiot like most of the current Democratic politicians.

“Donald Trump’s net worth has grown about 300% to an estimated $4 billion since 1987, according to a report by the Associated Press. But the real estate mogul would have made even more money if he had just invested in index funds. The AP says that, if Trump had invested in an index fund in 1988, his net worth would be as much as $13 billion.

Yes, if he had spent the last several decades living in a trailer park on dog food, instead of living a lifestyle that costs more in a month than the average person’s lifetime earnings. Anybody can match the market if they just leave the money alone.

You have to beat the market to match it AND take substantial profits all the while.

Yeah, also he swung some serious deals on his own, with a loan (not given free and clear) from his father. He basically built himself up to being about as rich as his dad before he even “took over” the family business. This was all through bluster and getting himself in WAY over his head, but managing to pull it off. His dad was a slow and steady kinda guy. Donald basically said fuck it and skipped straight to the top.

He did go broke in the early 90s, but that actually just makes his current net worth even more impressive since that was really when he had to start over, and when his “return” should be calculated from. He was 500 million in the hole at that point.

Bottom line is TONS of people have been born to families as rich as Trump was, and almost none of them are anywhere near as loaded as he is. Also none of them are president of the most powerful country on earth sooo…

I don’t like his style, but he’s not completely inept as many try to fool themselves into thinking.

Sorry, but he is completely inept. Incompetent is to nice a term…A downright ratfukin shit weazel and traitor to freedom loving peoples is more his speed. coupled with complete and total ignorance of all things. Devoid of any humanity. He is not a leader for democracy he is more aligned with being a Pricktator. He showers praise on his new friends like North Koreas dick-tator..The Philippines dick-tator and the Russian and Chinese Dick-tators.These are his idols. And his supporters are behind him cheering on these villains.

Okay, if you say so. I mean he definitely is used to being THE BOSS, but that’s how the business world works. If we’re all being honest I’m pretty sure everybody would prefer to be the dictator if they could. I’d love to rule the world, I’d get this place fixed up right quick! But I’m quite sure Trump is not planning to actually act on that and try to actually become a dictator, sooo…

And he’s a billionaire married to a supermodel, who shags porn stars. Never mind if that’s your gig, think it’s easy to accomplish?

Outside Bumfuck, Idaho, many people recognize that inheriting money is not particularly admirable.

Outside Bumfuck, Idaho, people recognized Melania Trump (if they recognized her at all) not as a supermodel but as a former downscale nude model who snagged one commercial and built on a sketchy immigration record by agreeing to marry a flabby old rich guy.

Outside Bumfuck, Idaho, most people recognize that raw-dogging porn stars not only is relatively easy (if you have the standards for it) but also is little to be proud of while your wife is home with the infant.

Trump is the no-count goober’s idea of what a successful, educated, wealthy person must be like.

Couldn’t help myself! Basically the list is almost like a list of Whitest States Evar, with all these HORRIBLE conservative states somehow actually coming out ahead in their test scores… How could those EVIL RIGHT WINGERS do it???

Also, Idahos unemployment rate has always been below the national average. The Great Recession might as well have not even happened there. It’s so funny how people get caught up in their silly little bubbles, imagining things to be completely different from how they actually are.

He’s a Machavellian who finds it useful to be thought stupid by his enemies, and to have them too outraged to think straight. It’s amazing me how many people don’t pick up on that, and walk around in an outraged daze as a result.

One of the creepiest things I ever saw with Bush was a speech he gave while he was governor of Texas. He WAS KILLER. Like a totally different person. At that moment I realized there were only 2 possibilities. He was either acting dopey on purpose, OR perhaps the pressure of being Pres was too much for him, so he was nervous all the time. I personally think he was nervous, having been pushed into it by poppy Bush. But he was definitely not as big a dope as he seemed while in office.

To listen to Trump talk or give a speech is like fingernails on a chalkboard. The man does not even have command of the English language. His stupidity and bullish like behavior is so obvious and in your face outrageous and yet people cant see it…Boggles the mind. Its hard seeing this man as president but what really gets me is how many stupid people we have in this country that have empowered this imbecilic moron ..Thats scary. America has sucked itself down the shithole.

Honestly, I don’t know. My first impression was Doofus. After all, it seems fairly obvious that if you’re going to have any sort of law enforcement crackdown you’re going to need someplace to put all the people you arrest. Given that kids are among the border crossers (whether legitimately or otherwise) the result–outrage–seems pretty predictable.

But sometimes too when I see how the Democrats and the media have reacted I wonder if Trump set them up. I mean, they act like they’ve completely lost their minds. The way they’re behaving seems like the perfect way to get Trump’s base to the polls in November.

Trump’s genius is in baiting his opponents into taking unpopular or indefensible positions. His tactic is to occupy the field by saying something he knows is going to set his opponents off and then moderating as they lose their mind essentially ceding the field to him on a popular issue. The way to beat Trump is to kill him with kindness and reasonableness. Don’t take the bait and let him be the one who looks unreasonable. But doing that requires a level of maturity and calculation beyond that of the Democrats and their operatives in the media.

When it comes to Trump and his Trumpanzee brigade there is no being nice…The things they support are beyond any comprehension of common sense…Everything the republican party stands for is anti-consumer and anti-worker the very things they (Trumpy Toads)themselves have needed and used….To vote against helping Americans and giving everything to the corporations and their 1%rs is downright stupid and stupid does describe the Trumpanzees. Trump and his GOP goons do not support the interests of working Americans…Show me one law they have supported that has or will help regular working Americans….Give me one and dont say tax cuts thats BS…That was purely for the rich.

I see it as he gets to Bebe proactive by controlling the new cycle 95% of the time. 5% of the time he has to be reactive, situations like this. I can see that distractions such as “covfefe” make perfect sense, because all he has to do is generate a new story. This time he acted to diffuse the story, once again taking the proactive approach. Bush never did this.. so the negative news was able to grip his coattails and never let go.

Bush was also a giant piece of shit who invaded Iraq based on lies and half truths and may have single handedly fucked over America with his bullshit economic and military fiascoes. Seeing the media trot out that scumbag and his wife as some sort of moral paragons compared to Trump disgusts me deeply.

As I said in an earlier post, he is not an intellectual guy… But he has good gut instincts. He uses this to throw his opponents off guard constantly. It is a chaotic method, but it has worked for him thus far. He’s forced the left to show their true cards on a lot of issues, which most Americans don’t agree with. Making the Dems come out for “There should be NO immigration enforcement” compared to “We should just be nice and let these DACA kids stay” which was their lie, has probably turned a lot of Americans off. I think he’s going to continue this strategy the whole time through.

Trump is such whiny twit…He constantly fans the flames of hate about all them evil immigrants (The same people he wants to work in his restaurants for a bit of irony) Trump needs to create this image of enemies out to get us and steal our food stamps and jobs and the usual hum drum of rhetorical BS to appease his evil racist religious zealots of the Trumpanzee brigade. You know the types the ignorant ranting white trash, The usual hate mongers..Notice how he always drags the immigrant problem in his daily minutia of hate, hate, hate and of course the media is enemy number one. and the FBI are witch hunters …Trumps presidency is one of total incompetency and childlike vindictiveness, vile,evil beyond anything we have seen in a while. This man is a blemish on democracy and supported by all the corporate bought and paid for Republicans. To listen to a Trumpyturd tell me what a great president he is makes want to scream out loud. MAGA=Moronic Arrogant Greedy Arseholes. A red made in china hat is their logo.The sign of stupid.

Trump’s sense that gains for immigrants come at the expense of U.S. citizens is of a piece with his zero-sum view of international trade

Letting in large numbers of low-skilled aliens is objectively harmful and costly to American citizens. And running a massive trade deficit with a corrupt communist state bent on destroying the US is extremely dangerous. The fact that Trump understands something that obvious is not a testament to Trump’s intelligence, it is a testament to a fundamental ideological blind spot and irrationality among Reason staff.

modified a “zero tolerance” policy……. he decided to not look the other way…. hardly seems to me like something that we should condemn an officer of the law for let alone the supreme law enforcement officer of our land….. But I guess if it furthers your agenda have at it.

since we all can assume the idea that trump is clever anything is preposterous, it’s apparent from the history of his statements from the beginning of his campaign to today that his white-hot hatred of illegal aliens from hispanic countries has nothing to do with his supporters or politics. it seems to go beyond even simple racism. somebody out there knows the answer to why trump’s toxic obsession with this issue consumes him.

It probably has something to do with the fact that low skilled illegal Hispanic immigrants are a net drain on native born tax payers, that they (NOT legal immigrants) have higher crime rates than native born (especially if you exclude black and native born Hispanic crime rates from the “national average”), suppress wages of the working class, and vote for shitty big government. Those are all the reason I am against mass scale illegal Hispanic immigration… And I am part beaner myself, and grew up in California!

We can solve the separation problem simply by apprehending the ILLEGAL ALIENS as soon as they get into the US. Put them ALL on a boat of some sort wait 2 weeks and take every one of them to the port city nearest the country they came from and dump em. That way the US won’t have to bend over backwards to provide for ILLEGAL ALIENS.